A climate perspective on the Australian budget

The budget handed down on Tuesday night by Treasurer Joe (I don’t like wind turbines) Hockey continues the recent trend of Coalition policy documents that sweeps the idea that Australia should be acting – urgently or otherwise – on climate action under the carpet. The energy white paper, and even the discussion paper on emission reduction targets, assumed that the world would continue on business-as-usual and do nothing more to reduce emissions from a trajectory of warming the world by an average of 4C, a scary outcome, scientists say, for many and particularly Australia. … There is hardly any mention of climate change in the budget documents, apart from the Coalition’s continued determination to remove the phrase from the government’s lexicon, and to dismantle the remaining initiatives of Labor’s Clean Energy Package, presumably when if and when it wins the election in late 2016/17.